On Saturday we went to one of Tamera's open days. This one was focusing on their water projects and I was SO excited by their ideas and what they have done. I share the beief they have, that Portugal has the potential to be rich and self sufficient in food and other products that you can get from the land. They have moved earth and let the rain into their landscape and built gardens all over the place. I visited Tamera a few years ago and saw that gardening was a bit of a struggle, but now... What a difference. Using permaculture as a basis for their gardening experiments everthing looked green and growing. And so lovely to have all those lakes, including the last huge project up at the top, to catch and hold rain and stop all the rivers just flooding and washing away precious topsoil down to the sea. I really recommend a visit. The food at lunch time was really good, too.
After lunch we went to visit their 'Solar Village'. This is a big project where they have created different forms of capturing the sun's energy, to cook, to make electricity, to turn a big flywheel to use the power for pumping water or any other machine that would work off drive bands. And it's all low-tech. I liked the bio-gas collector. Very nifty. There were other things we could have chosen to look at, like herbs and salves and potions, or the standing stone circle. Even just walking around the main lake is a lovely experience.
They have a dream of creating a chain of a thousand lakes in Alentejo. So hats off to Tamera!
They have a website. Just put in 'Tamera' and you will get it. Well worth checking out.
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